Continental · 1889–1976
Martin Heidegger
German philosopher of Being, compromised by his Nazi party membership
Heidegger argued that Western philosophy forgot the question of the meaning of Being; he analysed human existence (Dasein) as being-in-the-world, care and being-towards-death, and later criticised technology for revealing everything as a resource.
Life and thought
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) grew up in Messkirch, a small Catholic town in Baden, and first trained for the priesthood. He became Husserl’s assistant in Freiburg, made his name with Being and Time (1927) and succeeded Husserl in his chair in 1928. In 1933 he joined the Nazi party and served for a year as rector of Freiburg University; his private notebooks, published from 2014, contain antisemitic passages, and how far his politics shapes his philosophy is still debated.
Being and Time asks what it means for anything to be. Heidegger starts from Dasein, the being that we ourselves are, and argues that we are not detached minds facing objects but always already in a world of tasks and tools: a hammer shows up first as something to hammer with, not as a thing with properties. Our being is care, stretched between past and future, and facing our own death can call us back from the anonymous “they” to an authentic life. Later he argued that modern technology reveals everything, people included, as a stockpile of resources.
Works
Shaped by
1859–1938Edmund HusserlHeidegger was Husserl’s assistant in Freiburg, then broke with his method.384–322 BCEAristotlePlato’s student, Alexander’s tutor, founder of the Lyceum1813–1855Søren KierkegaardDanish Christian thinker of the anxious, choosing individual1833–1911Wilhelm DiltheyGerman historian of ideas who defended the human sciencesStudents
1906–1975Hannah ArendtArendt studied with Heidegger at Marburg in 1924–25.1900–2002Hans-Georg GadamerHeidegger’s student, who made hermeneutics a philosophy of understanding1898–1979Herbert MarcuseMarcuse worked with Heidegger in Freiburg in 1928–32.1900–1990Nishitani KeijiNishitani attended Heidegger’s lectures in Freiburg from 1937 to 1939.Shaped
1905–1980Jean-Paul SartreParisian novelist and philosopher, the public face of existentialism1926–1984Michel FoucaultFrench historian of madness, prisons and sexuality1930–2004Jacques DerridaDeconstruction grew out of Heidegger’s “destruction” of the history of metaphysics.1931–2007Richard RortyNeopragmatist who challenged philosophy’s claim to mirror realityCriticised by
1906–1995Emmanuel LevinasLevinas attended Heidegger’s lectures, then rejected the primacy of ontology over ethics.1903–1969Theodor W. AdornoAdorno attacked Heidegger’s language in The Jargon of Authenticity (1964).1891–1970Rudolf CarnapCarnap’s 1932 essay held up Heidegger’s “the Nothing itself nothings” as a model of a meaningless pseudo-sentence.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1885–1962Tanabe HajimeKyoto School philosopher and Nishida’s critic1885–1968Xiong ShiliFounder of New Confucian metaphysics1889–1951Ludwig WittgensteinViennese-born Cambridge philosopher who overturned his own first philosophy1891–1962Hu ShiMay Fourth reformer who brought pragmatism to China1891–1956B. R. AmbedkarDalit leader, jurist and chief architect of India’s constitution1891–1970Rudolf CarnapVienna Circle’s great system-builder, later in Chicago and Los AngelesOn the record
Husserl’s link to Heidegger is coded as influence, not teaching: Heidegger was his assistant, not his doctoral student.
Heidegger took his doctorate in 1913 and wrote his habilitation (1915) under the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert. He became Husserl’s assistant in Freiburg in 1919 and they ran seminars together; he later dedicated Being and Time to Husserl “in friendship and admiration”. “Influence” is the accurate kind.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Martin Heidegger”